PUBLIC MARKS with tags "unit test" & php

If you’ve been around PHP for more than a little while, you’ve no doubt started to test your code. And if you ask anyone in the PHP space what to use for writing unit tests, likely the first answer that they’ll give you is PHPUnit. It’s the de facto standard in the PHP community, and with good reason. But it’s not the only choice. Whilst it does command the lion’s share, other choices abound, one of which I’m going to take you through in this tutorial; it’s called atoum.

Testing is an essential aspect of developing in any programming language. If you don't test your source code then how can you verify it works as expected? Manual testing can only be performed irregularly and usually only in limited ways. The answer to testing source code regularly, and in depth, is to write automated tests which can be frequently executed. In PHP such tests are usually written using a unit testing framework, a framework which allows the source code of any application or library to be tested as isolated units of functionality such as a single class or method. As unit testing has gained popularity, it has become a standard practice in PHP with libraries and frameworks such as Swiftmailer, the Zend Framework and Symfony all requiring unit test coverage of their source code.

The SimpleTest PHP unit tester is available for download from your nearest SourceForge. It is a PHP unit test and web test framework. Users of JUnit will be familiar with most of the interface. The JWebUnit style functionality is more complete now. It has support for SSL, forms, frames, proxies and basic authentication. The current CVS code should become the 1.0.1 release real soon now and includes file upload and many small improvements. The idea is that common but fiddly PHP tasks, such as logging into a site, can be tested easily.